


July, Florida

by oselle



Series: Birthright [7]
Category: The Faculty (1998)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Friendship/Love, Fugitives, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Prostitution, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 12:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/953232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oselle/pseuds/oselle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zeke and Casey, on the run.</p>
            </blockquote>





	July, Florida

**Author's Note:**

> Podfic available [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/941231).

Zeke went to the hospital to get Casey. The sliding doors opened, whisper-quiet, to let him in, and closed just as quietly behind him, shutting out the street traffic. The lobby was decorated in soothing shades of pink and gray, but the place still smelled like a hospital, that unmistakable disinfectant odor.  
  
Zeke walked up to the reception desk. “I’m here to see a patient, Casey Connor,” he said, struggling to keep his voice steady. He didn’t know if they would let him in.  
  
The receptionist was blonde and pert. She smiled and said, “I’m sorry, this is the Main Building. Casey’s in the Shermer Wing.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a tear-off pad of hospital plans. She tore one off and handed it to Zeke. Zeke thought it looked like the map of a small, poorly-planned city, a haphazard jumble of buildings and alleys.  
  
With a red ballpoint pen, she circled the Main Building and then drew a twisting red arrow to the Shermer Wing. “It’s not as bad as it looks, just stay on the walkway.”  
  
Zeke left the Main Building and followed the walkway. It was chalk-white, bordered by strips of green lawn and short, intermittent trees -- the manicured, oddly sterile greenery that all hospitals, community colleges and corporate headquarters seemed to share. Nature, reduced to a sort of upholstery. White, windowless walls loomed up around him, and Zeke thought he must be in the back of the hospital grounds. Why else would none of the buildings seem to have windows?  The sun beat down fiercely on the white walkway and reflected from the white buildings. No one passed him.  
  
He found the Shermer Wing with no incident. Another set of whispery doors brought him to another lobby, this one slightly shabbier, in 1970s shades of orange and green. The receptionist looked at him tiredly.  
  
“I’m here to see a patient. Connor. Casey Connor,” Zeke said. He was sweating a little from the heat outside.  
  
The receptionist sighed and opened up a large book on her desk. It reminded Zeke of a motel reservation book. “Casey Connor’s been moved to the Burke Pavilion.”  
  
Zeke looked at his map, but couldn’t see anything named the Burke Pavilion. “Where . . .”  
  
“Out the door and down the path and up the steps,” the receptionist said, in something close to a singsong.  
  
“But . . .”  
  
“Out the door and down the path and up the steps,” she repeated and pointed to the door with her pen.  
  
Zeke left the Shermer Wing and, remarkably, saw a set of concrete steps leading up. Feeling impatient, Zeke broke into a jog.  
  
The Burke Pavilion was a squat building with bowed front and no automatic doors. After the glaring brightness outside, the lobby looked dim, dingy. A fluorescent light flickered above a reception desk staffed by a heavyset security guard.  
  
“Casey,” Zeke said. “Casey Connor.”  
  
The guard didn’t look up from his crossword puzzle. “Wrong entrance. This is for doctors only. Visitors use the North Terrace Entrance.”  
  
“Where’s that?”  
  
The guard smirked. “On the North Terrace,” he said, but then had a little pity on Zeke and added, “To the left and around the corner.”  
  
Zeke found the North Terrace, and the North Terrace Entrance. A padlocked chain was looped through the door handles.  
  
“The fuck?” he muttered and pulled on the doors. They rattled against the chain. Zeke pounded on the metal door. “Hey!” he called, but no one answered. Zeke lifted the padlock and examined it; it was securely bolted and fiery hot from the sun. The key-slot was brown with rust.  
  
Now Zeke was _really_ sweating. He turned and doubled back to the Burke Pavilion’s front entrance.  
  
“Doctors only. Visitors use the North Terrace Entrance.”  
  
“It’s locked,” Zeke panted. “There’s no one . . . there’s no one there to let me in.”  
  
“That can’t be right,” the security guard said. “Are you sure?”  
  
Zeke leaned against the reception desk, sweat rolling down his back. “Look, I was just there. There’s a chain on the door. Come on man, can’t you let me in here?” He gestured to the empty lobby. “Who’s gonna know?”  
  
The guard let out a world-weary sigh. “ _Who_ are you here to see?”  
  
“Casey Connor.”  
  
“ _That’s_ right. _Casey_ ,” the man said. He tucked his pencil behind his ear and smiled. Zeke did not like the smile. He did not like the sound of Casey’s name in the man’s mouth, the familiarity with which he said it. The fluorescent light buzzed and flickered above them.  
  
“Are you going to let me in or not?” Zeke asked quietly.  
  
“Why don’t you wait here a minute?” the guard said and stood up. “I’ll just check with my supervisor, make sure it’s okay. Okay? You just wait here.”  
  
“Yeah, fine,” Zeke said.  
  
The guard began to walk away, then turned back to Zeke. He took the pencil from behind his ear and pointed it at Zeke. “You know, your friend’s a little . . . you know he’s . . .” He tapped the pencil against his forehead. “He’s pretty gone.”  
  
Zeke stared at the security guard. His heart pounded in his ears.  
  
“Get the hell out of here, man,” Zeke said. It was almost a whisper. The guard smiled and disappeared into some back office.  
  
Zeke didn’t wait. He glanced at the reception desk but found nothing, no computer, no logbook, nothing to give him Casey’s room number. But it was a small building, only three stories or so -- it had been hard to tell with no windows. He went to the elevator bank and jabbed the “Up” button. It lit up, bright red in the dim lobby.  
  
“Come on,” Zeke muttered. “Come on come on come on.”  
  
The elevator doors opened and Zeke got in and pressed the button for the second floor. The elevator was slate-green and the hospital stink in it was enough to make Zeke’s eyes water. There was a hint of something else there, too, something even more unpleasant, a musty smell like sweat and dirty sheets.  
  
The second-floor nurses’ station was deserted. In fact, the entire second floor seemed to be deserted. The lights were out and the all the room doors were open, empty, the beds neatly made, institutional gray blankets folded over white sheets. Sunlight glared through the rooms’ windows, out into the halls. Zeke didn’t remember those windows from the outside.  
  
“What the fuck is this?” he said.  
  
He returned to the elevator bank, but he could hear the elevator moving in the shaft, coming up. “Shit,” he breathed. Next to the elevator was a metal door with a square window in it. Zeke could see stairs through the window. He pressed the door-bar, hoping that the door wasn’t alarmed. Silence. Zeke ran up to the third floor.  
  
The third floor was the same as the second had been. No doctors, no nurses, no patients. No lights. Doors propped open onto empty rooms so neat and sterile that they looked as if no one had ever stayed in them. A white blaze of sunlight at every window.  
  
It was all wrong, and suddenly Zeke knew that this was what they _wanted_ him to think, that the place was deserted, that Casey wasn’t here. The security guard, though, he had slipped. He had known who Casey was.  
  
 _He’s pretty gone_.   
  
Zeke began to run, glancing into every room. “Casey?” he called. “ _Casey!_ ” His voice echoed back at him.  
  
Something caught his eye in a room on his right, something out of place in that stark tidiness. There was a sneaker on the floor. Just one. Blue, low-rise Converse. Zeke didn’t know if it was Casey’s or not. It could have been anyone’s. He turned it over in his hands. Something dark was caked into the familiar rubber tread. Zeke’s hands shook.  
  
“Casey, Jesus,” he whispered. “Where the fuck are you?”  
  
He looked around the room but saw nothing, no other clues. No, there . . . on the floor, beside the crisply-made bed. A crumpled strip of gauze. White gauze, smeared with red.  
  
Zeke heard something from outside the room, down the hall. The elevator doors, sliding open. Then he heard something else. Casey. Casey sobbing . . . no . . . Casey laughing? Zeke couldn’t tell which, but it was him, it was _him_ , he was sure of it.  
  
He dropped the sneaker and ran out in the hall, in the direction of Casey’s voice.  
  
“ _Casey,_ w _here are you?_ ”  
  
They were coming, they were coming down the hall. Zeke ran away from them, towards Casey. _Jesus, Jesus Christ,_ he thought frantically, in the closest thing to a prayer that Zeke had uttered since leaving Sunday school, ten years before. _Jesus, help me, help me here, please!  
  
_ Zeke rounded the corner onto a dead end, a closed door. There was a nameplate on the door.  
  
CONNOR, CASEY it read, as Zeke had known it would and underneath it, madly: DO NOT DISTURB.  
  
He threw himself at the door. It was locked. He looked through the door’s square, wired window. The room was the same as all the others, but the bed was occupied. A curtain was drawn around the head of the bed, so Zeke could not see Casey’s face. He could see Casey’s arms though, strapped to the bedrails, hands trembling, the fingers streaked with blood. Zeke could hear him too, making a sound somewhere between laughing and crying.  
  
“ _Casey!_ ” Zeke cried, trying to force the door open. “ _Casey!_ ”  
  
Zeke felt hands on him, on his shoulders. He tried to fight them off while keeping his eyes fixed on Casey’s form, legs under the gray blanket, bleeding hands at the ends of leather cuffs.  
  
“ _Don’t touch him, don’t you fucking touch him!_ ” Zeke screamed as they pulled him away from the door. “ _Casey!_ ”  
  
He heard Casey -- laughing now.  
  
“ _Casey . . .!_ ”  


  
_____  
  


“Casey,” Zeke said, waking with a start. He hadn’t shouted it, though, and he breathed a sigh of relief for that. He sat up in the bus seat, rubbing his eyes as if he could wipe away the nightmare. Beside him, Casey _was_ laughing, and Zeke turned to look at him, his neck stiff from the awkward sleeping position.  
  
Casey was in the seat beside him, and was laughing over something in his hand -- a Gameboy, Zeke saw. At Casey’s elbow, leaning over from the other side of the aisle, was another passenger, a middle-aged man with a boyish, round face. Zeke looked the guy over, sizing him up. Short-sleeved button-down shirt. Tie. Chinos. Typical JCPenney, middle-management attire. He looked harmless enough, but Zeke knew that appearances could be deceiving. Mary Beth had looked pretty harmless. The guys who had visited Zeke in prison to make him an offer he’d had no trouble refusing had looked as harmless as any office-park drone in America.  
  
“Hey,” he said, touching Casey on the arm. “What’s that?”  
  
Casey looked up grinning. “I had one of these at home,” he said. “Remember?”  
  
Casey’s memory was often unpredictable -- he could remember a game he’d had years ago, but he sometimes couldn’t remember, or didn’t understand, that he hadn’t always lived this life with Zeke. Zeke never bothered to correct him. He nodded and leaned over to look at the guy.  
  
“Did you give him that?” Zeke asked. From the corner of his eye, he saw Casey glance up at the wary tone in Zeke’s voice.  
  
The guy smiled broadly. “Just a loaner,” he said. “Casey here looked about ready to die of boredom.” The guy stuck out his hand. “Dan Peters. You must be Zeke.”  
  
Zeke shook Dan Peters’ hand briefly, dismayed that Casey had talked enough to tell him Zeke’s name and his own. Casey rarely spoke to strangers, but every now and then his guard would slip for some reason and he didn’t always recall the stories, the fake names, the things that Zeke had invented to cover their tracks.  
  
“I’m headed for Tallahassee,” Dan Peters was saying. “Had some business in Savannah and the old war-wagon just died on me. I work for myself so, you know, no expense account. Had to ‘go Greyhound’, as they say.” He gave Zeke a good-natured grin.  
  
“Yeah?’ Zeke said. “You always carry video games in your pocket?” Dan Peters smile faltered a little bit, and Zeke could tell he was the sort of guy who was used to being liked.  
  
“I spend a lot of time in airports, on the road. They’re a great way to pass the time. My kids turned me onto them,” he said, and produced a wallet from his back pocket as smoothly as a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Zeke glanced briefly at the picture in the plastic sleeve: Dan Peters, presumably Mrs. Peters, and two little Peterses, a boy of about fourteen and girl who might have been twelve. The American Dream. Only the family dog was missing.  
  
“That’s great,” Zeke said, because it seemed like he had to say something.  
  
“You know what, Casey can keep it,” Dan Peters said. “I’ve got another one at home and just between you and me . . .” He leaned over conspiratorially, “This is sort of last year’s edition.”  
  
Zeke looked at Casey. _What the hell?_ he thought. It was keeping Casey occupied, and Zeke was in no mood to take it away from him. Dan Peters didn’t seem to want anything for it.  
  
“Yeah, thanks,” Zeke said. “That’d be great.”  
  
“Hey, what do you know, Casey!” Dan Peters said. “That fine piece of equipment is now all yours . . . thanks to your big brother here!”  
  
Casey spared a moment from the game to flash a grin at Zeke, and then Dan Peters put his hand on Casey’s shoulder and gave him a friendly squeeze. It was a just-us-guys sort of gesture, but Zeke suddenly thought of the security guard in his dream, of the familiar way he had used Casey’s name. Sort of like Dan Peters, with his “Casey here” and his friendly gestures. He looked at Dan Peters’ hand on Casey’s shoulder, and contemplated telling him that Casey was autistic and didn’t like to be touched. Then he decided against it -- the autism story was one he only used when he had to, and Casey didn’t even seem to notice that Dan Peters was there. He was worried about nothing, Zeke decided. The dream had freaked him out, that was it. The dream and the whole past two weeks would have been enough to freak anyone out.  
  
They had spent those two weeks in Myrtle Beach, where Zeke had gone for a job that had promised a decent payout. He had spoken to the guy with the job before they had arrived, and everything had been set. Zeke had turned up at the address the guy had given him and had found a dumpy white-shingled house in the sort of neighborhood where people kept shotguns under their beds. That hadn’t been much of a surprise, but the yellow strip of police tape around the house -- _that_ had been new, and when Zeke had cautiously checked around, he’d found out that his new employer had been shot to death the night before. Apparently, he hadn’t gotten his shotgun out from under the bed fast enough.  
   
Zeke had bailed before the cops could pick him up for hanging around a fresh crime scene. He had gone back to their motel room and counted the money they had left and it had been just as puny of an amount as when Zeke had counted it that morning.  
  
Myrtle Beach was an expensive place to hole up, a resort town where even the most rundown motel room would cost them fifty bucks a night. But being in a resort town, Zeke was able to pick up a couple of crap jobs, washing dishes in one joint, washing cars in another, enough to add to their skimpy resources. A waitress at the seafood place where Zeke had wiped trays and bagged garbage for a couple of days had told Zeke about a trailer park where he could rent a trailer for $150 a week. He had moved himself and Casey into one of the grimy tin cans and he had quickly found out what $150 a week bought a guy in Myrtle Beach.  
  
The heat had been the worst of it. South Carolina in July was no place to live with an air conditioner that sometimes blew vaguely cool air and sometimes produced only a sooty mist. Within two days Casey had been vomiting from the heat and Zeke had stopped going out to look for work because he had been certain he’d come back and find Casey dead from heatstroke.  
  
A woman who lived two trailers down had seen Zeke sitting outside one evening, putting wet washcloths on Casey’s face and the back of his neck to cool him off. She had come back with two bowls of rainbow sherbet for them and had sat and talked with Zeke for a little while, and although Zeke had given his usual vague answers, it had been nice to have someone to talk to.  
  
The people who lived in those sorts of places were usually in the same miserable boat that he and Casey were, only they hadn’t needed an alien invasion and a dark conspiracy to get there, just some lousy choices and lousier luck. In many ways, Zeke depended on the ease of being able to slip through the cracks of society to keep himself and Casey safe; they _needed_ to stay off the nice middle-class grid where people had legitimate social security numbers and W-4 forms and credit histories. But ever since that day when he had tied Casey’s sneakers back in Herrington, Zeke had met plenty of people who had just fallen off that grid on their own and had almost no hope of ever getting back on. They had slipped through the cracks, and it was a scary, shitty, nowhere place to be. Sometimes, Zeke would think blackly that if Mary Beth had been a little more clever, she would have started the invasion not in a comfortable middle-class high school but in a trailer park or a cheap motor court or in any one of the between-the-cracks places where poor, unlucky people barely held their lives together. By the time anyone on the grid would have noticed anything, it would have been far too late.  
  
Zeke had thanked the woman for the sherbet and she had gone back to her trailer, but fifteen minutes later she had come back with her husband and he had been carrying an air conditioner that had turned out to be old and loud but blessedly, frigidly functional.  
  
Near the end of their second week, Zeke had heard about the possibility of a job in Pensacola, Florida. Pensacola was far away, and Zeke had been worried that the car wouldn’t make it, but the job had sounded like a good one and he’d had enough of Myrtle Beach, anyway.  
  
The car had given up the ghost outside of Charleston. Zeke had tried to get it fixed but the mechanic had said it would take two days to order parts and he had quoted a figure that had made Zeke want to laugh, cry and throw up, all at the same time. So he had gotten himself and Casey to the bus terminal in Charleston and loaded them on a Greyhound that would be following I-95 down to Jacksonville, where they could transfer for another bus to Pensacola. By the time they had gotten on the bus in Charleston, both Zeke and Casey had been exhausted from heat and stress, but the bus had been luxuriously cool. Zeke had fallen asleep almost immediately, his head against the window, Casey lying across his lap, the blazing southern highway hurtling past them at seventy miles an hour.  


  
_____  
  


The bus got into Jacksonville at 9:30 p.m. and Zeke found out that the connecting bus to Pensacola would not be leaving until 11:00. He stepped outside to have a smoke while Casey sat yawning on the curb. The night air was heavy and wet, and Zeke wondered how the hell anyone lived in the south year round.  
  
“Zeke, I’m tired,” Casey said. “Are we staying here?”  
  
“Not tonight. You can sleep on the bus.”  
  
Casey yawned and nodded, and Zeke was grateful that he was in a quiet mood in spite of the day they’d had. He looked down at Casey, sitting with his eyes closed and his head resting on his drawn-up knees. He could be any kid with no decent place to sleep. Who would ever believe what he had been through just to get to this nowhere place?  
  
Zeke pitched his cigarette butt into the street and bent down to put a hand on Casey’s shoulder.  
  
“I’m going inside, Casey, come on.”  
  
Zeke scanned the terminal for Dan Peters. The guy had attempted to strike up a conversation with Casey after he had lost interest in the Gameboy, and then with Zeke, but Zeke had pretended to go back to sleep. He hadn’t been particularly interested in chatting. The guy had stuck to them like glue when they had gotten off the bus and had offered to buy them dinner, and Zeke had managed to shake him off. Zeke knew that if Peters was going to Tallahassee, he’d probably be on the same Pensacola-bound bus as them, and he planned to get to the bus just before it left so that they wouldn’t wind up sitting next to the guy again. He’d had his fill of Dan Peters.  
  
Zeke went into the men’s room, Casey dragging along behind him. Zeke headed for the sinks and Casey dropped his knapsack in the corner and sat down on the floor with his eyes closed.  
  
“You okay there, Casey?” Zeke asked.  
  
“Yeah,” Casey answered groggily.  
  
“We’ll be back on the bus soon.”  
  
“’Kay.”  
  
Zeke bent over the sink and splashed cool water on his face. He passed his wet hands over his tired eyes. He heard someone come to stand beside him, and thought it must be Casey, but when he opened his eyes and looked in the mirror, he saw Dan Peters’ blandly smiling face.  
  
“Nothing like washing up in the bus station, eh?” he said pleasantly. “Been there many times myself.”  
  
Zeke turned his back on him and reached into the paper towel dispenser. It was empty, so he dried his face on his shirt. Zeke felt Dan Peters’ hand on his arm, and he tensed and turned around to look into his nondescript, round face.  
  
Zeke talked before he could. “What’s your story, man? What do you want?”  
  
He smiled. “I just . . . I thought you guys looked a little rough around the edges. You and your brother. Maybe I could help out.”  
  
“You a Jehovah’s Witness or something? I don’t need any saving.”  
  
“Oh no, Zeke, it’s nothing like that. It’s just . . . an offer.”  
  
Realization dawned in Zeke’s mind. He’d heard this offer before -- once in prison, once again from the one-armed man outside of Chicago. He was surprised that anyone was bothering to make it again. He turned away from Dan Peters with a tired smirk. “No thanks, man. I’ve already heard it. Still not interested.”  
  
The hand was back on Zeke’s arm, now quick and urgent. “I don’t think you understand, Zeke. Don’t take this personally, but . . . it’s Casey. I’m talking about Casey.”  
  
Zeke turned to face him slowly, and Dan Peters kept talking, a flood of words spilling from his mouth.  
  
“It would just be an hour, just an hour, that’s all I need. I’d buy you guys dinner, and I’d pay for the room of course and there’s an extra hundred bucks in it for you. Just give me an hour. You can stay right outside the door if you want. I won’t hurt him. I’d never . . . hurt him . . . or . . . or anyone. I’m always sweet to my boys. I’ll be so sweet to him.”  
  
Zeke felt his breathing accelerate. Anger surged upon him like a tide. He looked down into Dan Peters’ plain face and saw his eager eyes, his upper lip beaded with sweat, but in his mind Zeke saw him as he’d been on the bus, his hand so intimate on Casey’s shoulder, Casey’s name so familiar in his mouth.  
  
“Don’t tell me you can’t use the money, Zeke. A hundred bucks for an hour of your time. And Casey’ll have a good time. He’ll . . .” The guy paused and licked his lips. “He’ll fucking _thank_ you for it, you know? What do you say?”  
  
For one second, maybe two, long enough for two drops of water to fall from a leaky faucet, neither of them spoke or moved. Then Zeke snapped.  
  
With a strangled sound, he grabbed Dan Peters by his JCPenney shirtfront and lifted him bodily off the floor. In two steps, he had him rammed up against the wall. His head rapped loudly on the tile.  
   
“Hey, what the _fuck_?” Dan Peters squeaked. His face was red.  
  
“What do I _say_?” Zeke spat into his face. “What do I fucking _say_? Here’s what I fucking say.”  
  
Zeke pulled back his arm and punched him, twice, hard. With the first blow, Dan Peters goggled at Zeke, terrified. With the second, Zeke felt something pop in Dan Peters’ jaw. He grunted and his eyes rolled backwards. He went limp but Zeke held onto him for a few seconds, his arms trembling. Then Zeke let go of him and he slid down the wall, his mouth open and askew.  
  
Zeke backed away, shaking. He felt like a kid, younger than he had since the whole mess had begun, young and stupid and scared shitless. He was nineteen years old, he had two hundred dollars to his name, and he had just beaten a guy senseless in a Jacksonville bus terminal for asking him to pimp his friend for a hundred bucks and a meal. Zeke grabbed onto his elbows to get control of himself.  
  
“Zeke?”  
  
Zeke turned at the sound of Casey’s frightened voice. He looked into the corner where Casey had been dozing and saw him on his feet in an unsteady half-crouch, staring at Zeke with wide, wary eyes.  
  
“Casey . . .”  
  
“Is he one of them?”  
  
 _No_ , Zeke thought, but what did it matter? Was the truth really any better?  
  
“Yes,” Zeke lied and his cool steadiness returned to him, as if he were waking from a nightmare. “We’ve got to get out of here, Casey.”  
  
Casey threw a nervous glance at Dan Peters and nodded. He stood up, his back to the wall, his knapsack clutched to his chest.  
  
Zeke dragged the man into a stall and propped him up on the toilet so that Dan Peters' battered face wouldn’t be the first thing someone saw when he came into the bathroom. He was making loud snoring noises through his broken mouth. Zeke wedged the stall door shut with a wad of toilet paper. He hastily washed Dan Peters’ blood from his knuckles, then guided Casey out of the bathroom.  
  
It was still over an hour before the bus would be leaving for Pensacola, and Zeke didn’t want to be in the terminal when the guy came to. He looked at the schedule and saw that a bus for Orlando was leaving in five minutes.  
  
“Come on, Casey,” he said, hustling Casey along with an arm around his shoulders. Casey didn’t protest, but he was frightened and tired and kept tripping over his own feet. Zeke resisted the urge to sling Casey over his shoulder.  
  
They reached the Orlando bus just as the driver was closing the doors.  
  
“I can buy tickets on the bus?” Zeke asked the driver breathlessly.  
  
“There’s a ten-dollar surcharge.”  
  
Zeke thought about the pitiful crumple of bills in his wallet, about the wasted tickets to Pensacola, about the job that may or may not have been there, but for which he’d probably now be too late anyway. There was no point in thinking about it. There was nothing he could do.  
  
“Thank you,” he said, and nudged Casey onto the bus ahead of him.  
  
Zeke deposited Casey into a window seat. Casey clung to his knapsack, and Zeke didn’t try to take it from him. He kept his eyes fixed outside the window, looking for cops or security guards on the terminal floor, watching to see if they would come to the bus to find the guy who had beaten up that man in the bathroom. That nice guy, just a family man, on his way home to his wife and kids after a long business trip. Zeke had no idea what he would do if that happened.  
  
Only when the bus finally pulled out of the terminal did Zeke allow himself to exhale.  
  
He turned his attention to Casey, who was staring out the window, his knuckles white on the knapsack.  
  
“Case,” he said gently, “Come on, Casey, it’s okay now. You can let that go. Come on.” He eased the knapsack from Casey’s arms and put it on the floor. He pushed up the armrest between their seats and placed a hand between Casey’s tense shoulder blades.  
  
Casey shifted and looked at Zeke, his eyes ghostly in the bus’ dimmed lights. “It’s my fault they found us,” he whispered. “I talked to that guy.”  
  
“No way. It’s not your fault,” Zeke said. _It’s my fault,_ he thought. _I fell asleep, I left you alone. I let that guy talk to you. I let that guy_ touch _you._ He thought of Dan Peters’ avid eyes. “It’s not your fault,” he repeated.  
  
Casey frowned and went back to staring out the window. The night-bound interstate rolled past them. After a moment, Casey leaned tentatively against Zeke and Zeke put an arm around his narrow shoulders. Casey drew a deep, shuddering breath.  
  
“Zeke?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Where are we going?”  
  
For a moment, the question made him feel the way he had in the bathroom. Young and scared, and with no idea of how they’d wound up where they were. _I don’t know_ , he thought, but answered, “Orlando.”  
  
“Can they find us there?”  
  
“I hope not, buddy. I hope not.”  
  
Casey fell silent. Zeke was comforted by Casey’s weight in his arms and allowed himself to relax a little, but Dan Peters’ face kept appearing before him, sweat on his lip, eyes fever-bright. A faint wave of nausea washed over Zeke and he tightened his arms around Casey.  
  
There were people after them, people who wanted to use them, to send Casey back to that place, maybe just to put bullets in both of their heads. Compared to those people, Dan Peters had been nobody, a run-of-the-mill pervert, one of millions. Zeke should have laughed at him. But Dan Peters had made it so clear -- Zeke and Casey had fallen through the cracks. They were fair game to anyone, to any number of parasites.  
  
He thought of Mary Beth suddenly, how good she had made it sound, what a great benefit her kind would bring to this world. He thought of Dan Peters, of his hand on Casey’s shoulder. _I’m always sweet to my boys_.  
  
Zeke closed his eyes and wondered if they shouldn’t have let Mary Beth win, after all. 


End file.
